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Topic: Triple Crown (Read 930 times)

My friend Tony and I used to climb together a TON. At some point,enchaining NH's three biggest (trad) climbing areas came up in one ofour discussions. The idea had been slowly percolating in the back ofour minds, and the perfect opportunity came up this past weekend. My GF's momwas in town, and I decided that I could skip out for a BIG day ofclimbing. I drove up to Cannon Friday night, and slept in the car. Tony left hishouse at 3am Saturday morning, since the meeting time was 6am. Asusual, we were both early, and totally pumped! Looking up at the crag,we knew W-G was going to be our only option, since everything else wassoaking wet. I ate my breakfast as we racked up. 6:05am was theofficial start time. We made the hike in pretty fast - 35 minutes.Just as we reached the bottom of the route, the sun crested Lincoln/Lafayette and felt wonderful. I took off on the first pitches -stringing together the first 200' or so. I got a little off route, andended up belaying under the 5.8 loose pitch. Tony came up and told meI needed to be about 60' down and left, so he built a belay, and Idownclimbed a little, then kept going. I think I had only placed 4pieces of gear, so I had plenty left. I went up another 100' or so,and pretty much just lost my mojo. I built a belay, and brought Tonyup. He took off on the next 200', which included the awesome "PipePitch". The sun was shining, the rock warm, and we had the routetotally to ourselves. It was AWESOME! Tony brought me up, and then Ifinished up the last 100'. As I was climbing the route, I noticed allof the fixed gear and pitons, thinking, "Hmmmm, if I do this again, Iam not going to bring much gear..." Well, I probably should not havethought that. I topped out at 8:33am, and put Tony on belay. Andwaited. And waited. And waited... Finally the rope started moving, andhe came up. I knew I had done something wrong by this point, so Iasked him. He said the link cam I used had snapped a wire, and he couldnot retrieve it. Much sadness ensued. That was ok though, just anoffering to the climbing gods! We boogied out, and were back at thecar by 9:35am. Not too bad - 3.5hr car-car, and only hurt that we lostthe link cam.

One hour later brought us to the top of Cathedral, where we dropped acar off. We pulled in to the Whitehorse parking lot around 11am, andheaded up to do Standard Route. Well, the hordes of people there madethat impossible. After a short discussion, we decided to do Beginner'sRoute, which both of us had done only once before, and pretty muchhated. (Oh well!) Tony took off and strung the first 4 or so pitchestogether, and I simul-climbed behind. He stopped at the belay beforethe 5.5R runout section, mostly because we caught up to the party whowas there when we started about 10 minutes before. They were at thenext pitch by the time I got to the belay, so I took off on the short100' section, and caught them. Eventually they moved out of theway, and Tony set off again, stringing the next 500' or so together. Iwas almost running up the slabs to keep up with his pace. The climbwas actually rather enjoyable, and we decided that when we had done itbefore, we must have been on the wrong route. I would definitely doBeginner's again. At the top, we were chatting with the party in frontof us, and they said that they were also stuck behind another party,and were planning on going to Cathedral after this route, probablyaiming for Bombardment... Challenge accepted: beat them to the route!(They were clearly pretty fast, since we did not see them on the routeafter they left the tree belay.) After stacking the ropes, we headeddown the trail, and over to Cathedral. Here is where we took a wrongturn though. At the bottom of Whitehorse, there is a sign that says,"Parking area 1.0mile," and "Cathedral Ledge 0.3mile." So, wenaturally opted for the shorter, more direct path to Cathedral. Whatwe didn't know, is that it was going to take us to the top ofCathedral, not the bottom, where we wanted to be! So, at the top, wemade the crappy hike down the road (past my car) running bits of it,to make it faster.

We got to the trail for the lower left wall, and the two fromBeginner's were just pulling up in their car We hustled in, andbegan to realize just how wiped out we were, when we had to stop acouple of times on the very short uphill section! We passed ThreeBirches and roped up for Bombardment. I opted for the well protected5.10a variation, but realized very quickly that I was not going to beable to repeat my on sight from last year. I ungraciously pulled on the bolt, clippedthrough the hard section, and continued up to the beautiful handcrack. Now is when the day really caught up to me. The crack is only5.8 or so, but I felt like I was going to pop off at any moment, andreally felt like a fall was coming. Somehow I managed to stay on, andgot to the top. I brought Tony up, and he pretty much flopped onto theledge. We still had a couple of pitches left though, so he got ittogether and hiked up to the base of Upper Refuse. There were a bunchof people on The Book, and there were some Frenchies with Metro Rockcards on their harnesses hanging around. I decided that I didn't wantto wait for anyone, and took off up the very wet beginning of UpperRefuse. After the first 10' or so, it was dry, and I went up to thetree belay without issue. I looked at the tree, down at Tony, heshouted out 30' of rope left; so I asked him if I should build abelay, or keep going? He said keep going. That was fine with me, sincethat meant ultimately less rope work. So, I topped out and hopped overthe tourist fence, and brought him up. There were a couple ofold-timers up there, and we were chatting away. (One of them was theFA of Hotter Than Hell). Tony finally came up, it was about 3:30 orso. He sat down, and I went over the car and got the beer that I hadstashed in the cooler. It was a perfect way to end the climbing day!We were pretty much wiped out, and I think I got pretty buzzed on theone beer (DFH 90min). On the way home we shared a pizza, and I got home to Medfordaround 7pm.